Lessons from Our Cigarette Policy for Obesity

Obesity has passed smoking as the country's biggest health burden. This is partly because Americans are getting fatter, and partly because more smokers are quitting. Is it time for the US to have a more serious anti-obesity policy?

The Atlantic's Megan McArdle, James Fallows and Marc Ambinder debated this very topic last year, and their thoughts are well worth reading.
To sum up with criminal briefness: Megan thinks the common
interventions don't work; Marc thinks good policy starts with the kids;
and James basically agrees with Marc.

I'd like to try a thought experiment. How are we turning the tide
against the smoking epidemic (smokers have fallen from 22.7 percent of
the population in 1993 to 18.5 percent in 2008)? I can brainstorm three
big fronts against tobacco: (1) new laws (2) new prices and (3)
widespread public relations. In the 1970s we banned TV and radio ads
with cigarettes, and forced cigarettes to print warnings from the
surgeon general. We later banned all tobacco ads in the 1980s. Recently
the federal government forced tobacco companies to print even bigger,
scarier-looking warnings on their products. Locally, big cities like
Chicago and New York have made it hell for smokers to indulge in public
spaces, and smokeless apartments and hotel rooms have proliferated
throughout the last thirty years. Meanwhile, many state taxes have
pushed cigarette prices through the roof, an anti-smoking advocacy
groups have raised hell behind the scenes, waging wars in state
legislatures and Congress, raging against movie studios and ad
companies and standing behind PSAs.

Could US obesity policy benefit from a similar three-pronged attack? The overlap is imperfect, but we can still look for analogs. An obesity policy cut from our cigarette-policy mold might include national laws to ax corn subsidies and local incentives
as small as tax breaks for companies who provide wellness programs. It
might include national or state taxes on junk food and soda. It might
include the emergence of obesity groups that offer sympathy for obese
Americans -- since obesity has a more significant genetic component
than a smoking addiction, it would be foolish and unfair to merely
demonize them -- but also advertises non-faddish methods for fighting
obesity with sustainable life choices. Whenever you start thinking
about ways to change American habits, the first step is to accept the
reality that it's very, very difficult. But the fact that cigarette
smoking has fallen about 20 percent in the last 15 years is reason to
think that the effort is not futile.